Need help picking a new server (is this the right place?)

[Guilherme26]

My father asked me to help him pick a new server for his company. It is a small accounting office with 8 employees. The current rig configuration is: an i7-7700k, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, 2 750GB hard drives and Windows Server 2012.

 

The main reason for a server is that the professional accounting program that he bought requires to be run on a server. Besides accounting they edit documents with LibreOffice, browse the internet with Chrome and run a few other light applications. Outside accounting, most of the others activities are done on their workstations. The workstation setup: i5-8400,8GB of DDR4 RAM, 250GB SSD and Windows 10.

 

I also need to use the server to backup the data from the workstations and then store all the data (server + workstations) elsewhere (external SSD, cloud storage service or both). Finally, I would like to have a USB-C port to transfer data to an external SSD that my father already own.

 

Because I'm not familiar with server specific hardware and there will not be an upgrade for at least some 5 years, that is what I thought:

• Ryzen 9 5900x;
• 32 GB of DDR4 RAM;
• Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite ATX (for the USB-C header) (could go for a smaller form factor);
• Corsair 4000d Airflow (for the USB-C port, could go for something smaller);
• Noctua NH-D15S (could go for something cheaper, but no liquid);
• 1TB Samsung M.2 SSD (currently the server has 550GB of data store incluiding the OS, and each workstation about 40GB of data besides the OS);
• 500 watts gold certified power supply;
• Windows Server 2019.

What you think? Am I on the right track? Should I go for a pre-built (like a DELL)?

[KingTdiGGiTTy]

1 minute ago, Guilherme26 said:

What you think? Am I on the right track? Should I go for a pre-built (like a DELL)?

A prebuilt would serve nicely and having real customer support is a plus.

I also think this system would be a good candidate for ECC memory and if its running the software for multiple users a lot of RAM might be good.

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 minutes ago, Guilherme26 said:

Besides accounting they edit documents with LibreOffice, browse the internet with Chrome and run a few other light applications. Outside accounting, most of the others activities are done on their workstations.

Stop web browsing and doing other tasks on the server, big security risk, and people have workstations anyways

 

11 minutes ago, Guilherme26 said:

What you think? Am I on the right track? Should I go for a pre-built (like a DELL)?

Thats what Id do here. NO reason to diy it. Get the better hrdwre from dell and warranty, a

 

Or just move it all to the clould and don't have a local server, probably cheaper and more reliable. 

[Guilherme26]

13 minutes ago, KingTdiGGiTTy said:

A prebuilt would serve nicely and having real customer support is a plus.

The problem is that I am not familiar with server hardware, so I don't know what to pick, I would have to take the salesperson's word for performance and quality of their product.

 

7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Stop web browsing and doing other tasks on the server, big security risk, and people have workstations anyways

They have access some government platforms that require an ID check, those checks are done with encrypted file that is stored on the server and we need one for each client.

We could install a copy on each computer, but I think it would be a bigger risk. Or we could switch to card based identification, but my father having been pushing away from it because the files are more convenient.

 

Also, I'm from Brazil so we don't get every product those kinds of companies have to offer and they take time to be available to here. And that is before the Covid shortages and the devaluation of our currency (5,6:1).

 

Finally, I saw this server on the DELL website, but I don't know if would fit his needs and the steep discount tells me is outdated (Am I wrong?).

https://www.dell.com/pt-br/work/shop/servidores-armazenamento-rede/poweredge-t340/spd/poweredge-t340/pe_t340_13159_bcc_2?view=configurations

 

All the product they have available right now have similar discounts.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, Guilherme26 said:

They have access some government platforms that require an ID check, those checks are done with encrypted file that is stored on the server and we need one for each client.

We could install a copy on each computer, but I think it would be a bigger risk. Or we could switch to card based identification, but my father having been pushing away from it because the files are more convenient.

 

Id say use a network share, seems like a much bigger risk doing web browsing on each system. That seems liek a bad setup.

 

2 hours ago, Guilherme26 said:

Finally, I saw this server on the DELL website, but I don't know if would fit his needs and the steep discount tells me is outdated (Am I wrong?).

https://www.dell.com/pt-br/work/shop/servidores-armazenamento-rede/poweredge-t340/spd/poweredge-t340/pe_t340_13159_bcc_2?view=configurations

 

All the

Yea that should be fine. But why not keep using your current server the 7700k should be plenty for your uses here.

[Pixel5]

does the account software that needs to have something run on the server require a lot of CPU performance?

because i dont see anything in the list of things they are doing that would require more then even an i3 10100 or from the ryzen side of things even something like an 3300x would already be total overkill for their use case.

 

[KingTdiGGiTTy]

18 hours ago, anodos said:

and much higher quality components than consumer hardware.

You can buy server hardware. 

Plus prebuilt servers almost always use proprietary parts, that  can sometimes be a problem. 

But... in this situation I would recommend a prebuilt; most likely a supermicro.